The leadership of the House of Representatives is eyeing to return to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) the “poorly constructed” 2026 budget amid allegations of funding redundancy for the corruption-ridden flood control projects.
Members of various political blocs, led by House Deputy Speaker Ronnie Puno — chairperson of the National Unity Party — announced the plan in a briefing on Wednesday, though the recommendation still lacks the imprimatur from Speaker Martin Romualdez.
Puno had earlier flagged the National Expenditure Program, which outlined the P6.793 trillion proposed budget for 2026, submitted by the DBM to the House on 13 August.
The House leader claimed that the NEP contains budget items for flood control projects that have already been completed, while funding for ongoing and priority programs received zero allocation.
In addition, he accused it of containing uniform amounts for several projects worth P73 million to P93 million, all outlined in a single page in NEP.
Puno said he was not convinced that the DBM failed to notice such red flags before submitting the NEP to Congress, suggesting that the agency may be complicit with the Department of Public Works and Highways to insert funding for flood control projects.
“We’re not causing trouble here…We just don't want to accept this crappy job and then get blamed again,” Puno told reporters in Filipino. “We cannot keep covering up for a poorly constructed budget. There’s no way we’re going to take the heat for that indefinitely.”
“We’re appealing to the Speaker to allow us to just please return this,” he added, referring to the NEP.
The NEP is the President’s proposed budget submitted by the DBM to Congress for approval. It serves as the basis for the budget bill, which becomes the General Appropriations Act when enacted.
President Marcos Jr. had already warned members of Congress that he would not approve a proposed budget that deviates from the NEP, regardless of whether it results in a reenacted budget.
The stern warning was prompted by the allegations of billions of alleged congressional insertions in the highly controversial 2025 budget, which is being blamed on the bicameral conference committee composed of selected members of the House and the Senate.
Deputy Speaker Janettte Garin suggests that it’s best to revert the NEP to the DBM, asserting that it’s always the House that is being blamed for alleged illegal insertions.
“But if we look at it, the ghost projects that President Bongbong Marcos visited recently were agency-initiated. Meaning, they came from the department,” she stated in the same briefing.
House infrastructure committee chairperson Terry Ridon has insisted that funding for some questionable projects, including flood mitigation, emanated from the NEP submitted by the DBM and were not “inserted” by Congress.
This includes the P55-million reinforced concrete river wall project in Baliwag, Bulacan, which was inspected by Marcos on 20 August, only to discover it was a ghost or nonexistent.
Aside from this, the funding for several botched flood control projects, including the deteriorating P380-million dike in San Teodoro, Oriental Mindoro, the P260-million rockshed at Tuba, Benguet, and the botched P96.4-million flood control project by St. Timothy in Calumpit, Bulacan, were all NEP-originated projects and not congressional insertions.
“They always mentioned that congressmen have cuts […] yet many of the places that the President has visited are not congressional insertions. These are NEP-originated projects. Meaning, this is an executive proposal. So it's difficult to say that congressmen, the senators, interfered here,” Ridon said in an interview late August.
Puno has no qualms in placing the blame for the budget blunders on the DBM, headed by Secretary Amenah Pangandaman.
The solon asserted that the DBM should come up with “decent paperwork that we will correct only minor items than a sloppy paper where we have to reedit and do the entire thing.”
“[If] we solve it, they’ll accuse us of realigning the entire budget, [that] the congressmen have tampered with it again. If we don't touch it, then it’s like we’re complicit in the wrongdoings,” Puno lamented.
“We do all the work, yet we get blamed for all these problems that happen. And why? Because they cannot do their job? That’s not right,” he added.
Aside from the DPWH, House leaders claimed that upon review, they also uncovered alleged systemic anomalies in the preparation of the 2026 NEP, particularly within the budget of the Departments of Agriculture and of the Interior and Local Government, as well as the Philippine National Police.
The red flags include identical amounts, oversized lump-sum “nationwide” allocations under DPWH, reports of unsolicited proposals for billions worth of firearms under the DILG/PNP, and of “allocation-for-sale” schemes in the DA’s budget for farm-to-market roads.
“These are not isolated mistakes. They reflect deeper flaws in the way the budget was crafted,” the House leaders emphasized. “Before Congress can deliberate responsibly, the Executive must first correct and clean up these provisions.”